Originally Posted by
silverstrata
There is a big difference between releasing your full capabilities and making yourself look incompetent. All they need do is degrade the quality of the proper surveillance photos by 90% and release those. But to release an iPhone video through a frosted window on an official USN website, is a
PR blunder of epic proportions. But having watched a recent documentary on Canadian SAR aircraft, where the equipment was three decades old and barely worked, I do wonder.
Incompetent?
PR blunder of "epic proportions?" I strongly disagree and your claim has no basis in fact. US Navy does not need or want to fly around the Med just to do a
PR patrol or to show off images (and what are you claiming they should show images of?) . The photo you saw merely indicated that USN has a search in effect, it has assets joining the international search effort, and there is no need to say anything else at this time. If they find something relevant, they will report it to the incident command of the search effort.
The Navy aircraft is not a news helicopter. Even if they wished to show off better capabilities, there is a long process to move sensitive details to a public forum and it has nothing to do with simplistic claims like "degrade by 90%" or whatever. Instead of doing this for images of the empty sea, resources are much better spent elsewhere, even if you just want to look at some reconnaissance details.